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Secularists are often wrongly accused of trying to purge religious ideals from public discourse. We simply want to deny them public sponsorship.
Wendy Kaminer
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Wendy Kaminer
Age: 74
Born: 1949
Born: December 28
Journalist
Lawyer
Writer
Often
Accused
Trying
Discourse
Deny
Ideals
Atheism
Secularists
Simply
Sponsorship
Public
Purge
Religious
Wrongly
More quotes by Wendy Kaminer
As Camille Paglia's success has demonstrated, what is most marketable is absolutism and attitude undiluted by thought.
Wendy Kaminer
Spirituality authors, who are generally forgiving of most human foibles ... take a hard line on intellectualism.... Skepticism they view with contempt, as the refuge of the unenlightened.
Wendy Kaminer
Give the FBI unchecked domestic spying powers and instead of focusing on preventing terrorism, it will revert to doing what it does best - monitoring, harassing, and intimidating political dissidents and thousands of harmless immigrants.
Wendy Kaminer
I don't care if religious people consider me amoral because I lack their beliefs in God. I do however care deeply about efforts to turn religious beliefs into law and those efforts benefit greatly from the conviction that individually and collectively we cannot be good without God.
Wendy Kaminer
When the inner child finds a guardian angel, publishers are in heaven.
Wendy Kaminer
Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it's also saddled with democracy's vice - a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that's worth hearing.
Wendy Kaminer
The press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases. But real science thrives on the capacity for doubt.
Wendy Kaminer
I don't think of myself as having a particular role. I'm lucky enough to be able to make my living essentially by expressing my opinions. But, you know, I think the world would manage quite well if I weren't doing it.
Wendy Kaminer
The magical thinking encouraged by any belief in the supernatural, combined with the vilification of rationality and skepticism, is more conducive to conspiracy theories than it is to productive political debate.
Wendy Kaminer
One of the reasons I'm drawn to civil libertarianism as opposed to communitarianism is that I don't worry so much about the rights of the majority a majority is quite capable of enforcing and protecting its own rights.
Wendy Kaminer
The dissemination of pseudoscience, including such things as the fascination with near-death experiences and the growing belief by Americans -- 34 percent of them -- in reincarnation are dangerous. They help to break down the standards of reason.
Wendy Kaminer
What might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression.
Wendy Kaminer
It is the inevitable effect of religion on public policy that makes it a matter of public concern. Advocates of religiosity extol the virtues or moral habits that religion is supposed to instill in us. But we should be equally concerned with the intellectual habits it discourages.
Wendy Kaminer
Like heterosexuality, faith in immaterial realities is popularly considered essential to individual morality.
Wendy Kaminer
In this climate - with belief in guardian angels and creationism becoming commonplace - making fun of religion is as risky as burning a flag in an American Legion hall.
Wendy Kaminer
Under the rubric of religious freedom, we respect the right to worship differently much more than the right to worship not at all.
Wendy Kaminer
Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It's not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other.
Wendy Kaminer
In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.
Wendy Kaminer
I don't see a direct conflict between the rights of individuals and the rights of communities, because I don't perceive of communities as having rights in a way that individuals do. Communities certainly have interests, but they don't exactly have rights.
Wendy Kaminer
Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.
Wendy Kaminer
